When You Have to Play Soul

Have you got soul?" the newspaper advertisement began.

"If so, the World's Hardest Working Band is looking for you. Contact J. Rabbitte, 118 Chestnut St., Barrytown. Rednecks and Southsiders need not apply."

Guitarist Outspan and his bass-playing partner, Derek, are devoted musicians who dream of being in the perfect band. So they enlist a bootleg tape dealer, Jimmy Rabbitte, to create it.

Alan Parker's film The Commitments -- based on Roddy Doyle's novel of the same name -- is the story of Jimmy and his obsession with bringing "soul to the proletariat," and it is a story delivered with a dizzying amount of humor, gusto, and incredible music. The spirited actors and their electrifying musical performances are so wonderful that it is amazing to realize that 10 of the 12 performers have never acted before.

Jimmy, a lifelong resident of Dublin's bleak Northside just like Outspan and Derek, understands the music business better than anyone the two musicians know, and he is even more determined to be a success than they are. (He can't really help it; he's grown up in a house with Elvis' portrait hanging over the pope's and with a father who sings "Can't Help Falling in Love" at the dinner table.)

It takes Jimmy some time to weed out just the right members of the world's yet unnamed "hardest working band." But after enduring hopefuls who play the bagpipes, sing "Les Miserables," and have fluorescent mohawks, he is satisfied with his group.

Deco, the obnoxious lead singer, is discovered at a wedding, belting out with his incredible lungs while completely inebriated. Saxophonist Dean inherited his instrument from an uncle whose lung had collapsed. On drums is Billy, who plays his hocked drums in the pawnshop window before Jimmy hires him and buys the set. Steven, juggling medical school with band practice, "borrows" his grandmother's piano to use. "She doesn't know I took it, but she doesn't use the front room very much," he explains.

The Commitment-ettes are Bernie, Imelda, and Natalie, three young women Jimmy knew from school, and they are his secret weapon: Now the band has sex appeal, and the male musicians' interest is cemented. Plus, now there are band members who can sing Aretha Franklin tunes.

The last band member is Joey "The Lips" Fagan, a 50-ish trumpeter who arrives at Jimmy's house on a motorcycle, claiming to have played with Elvis, Otis Redding, and just about everyone else producing music in the '60s. When Jimmy asks him why he would bother with their band, just a bunch of amateur kids, Joey answers serenely, "God sent me." Jimmy's dad is a bit skeptical: "God sent him on a Suzuki?"

Joey becomes the spiritual guru of the group, reminding them of the necessity of their music. "They wouldn't be shootin' each others' asses off," Joey tells his young bandmates, referring to the Northern Irish, "if they had soul."

THE MANTRA NEVER ends throughout the movie: the working man's rhythm, the saviors of soul, music to the proletariat, the language of the streets. Over and over, Jimmy and Joey tell the band (named by Joey to signify their wholeheartedness) that they have to play soul: Aren't they the downtrodden? The lower class? The ones whom society has spit upon? It is their right and their duty to channel their anger about being born Dublin Northsiders through the most emotional and expressive music they know.

After some rough initial rehearsals, the Commitments begin to sound just right. However, despite Jimmy's drive and Joey's droplets of wisdom, the band unravels. Deco is arrogant and abusive, Dean loses interest in soul and wants to play jazz, and by the time the band starts to exceed everyone's musical expectations, their backstage arguments and dissatisfactions destroy their friendships.

With this most recent release, British director Parker, who has made many such popular and controversial movies as Midnight Express, Angel Heart, and Mississippi Burning, has made a fun, funny movie with terrific music. Not that this film could be mistaken for an MGM musical, though. There are depressing shots of the damp, dreary city, and the characters, with their pure talent (and their colorfully raw vocabularies), have to struggle with a helplessly afflicted system and a vicious cycle of poverty.

But the characters' economic and class situations are not the central focus of the movie. In the end, what matters is that they were granted a chance, an opportunity to improve themselves and expand their horizons. Joey comforts Jimmy when the band breaks up. Success would have been predictable, he says. "This way, it's poetry."

The movie really isn't deep enough to leave you pondering the social inequality and destitution of the Republic of Ireland; it will more likely make you start searching for all your old Motown albums. Its soundtrack, rollicking and lively, is the best developed character in the movie and probably will be number one on many Christmas lists this year.

Judy Coode, formerly news assistant as part of the Sojourners Internship Program, was living in Washington, DC at the time this review appeared.

The Commitments. Directed by Alan Parker. Released by Twentieth-Century Fox. 1991.